by Brett Waring
“Out!” the man snapped. “And line up alongside the coach with your hands in the air!”
He reached in and heaved the cowboy out to send him sprawling on all fours. Then he grabbed Nash’s shirtfront and hauled him out through the door. Nash stumbled and staggered, just managing to keep on his feet. He saw there were two more masked men holding rifles on him and the dazed cowboy. Nash straightened and stood against the side of the coach, hands raised. One by one the other passengers were hauled out and while this was going on Nash looked around and saw the last of the Indians disappearing through the timber, carrying their dead or wounded companions with them. He frowned. Looked to him as if the Indians had only been used to drive the stage off the normal trail to where these three rannies were waiting in ambush. It was a new style of hold-up, one he had never run up against during the time he had worked for Wells Fargo.
By now, the rest of the passengers were lined-up, the women cowering, the child crying and clinging to his sister’s skirts. The men, including the driver, lined up either side of Nash who, shifting position at a command from the masked man, glanced upwards as he stumbled and caught at the edge of the stage for support. Just above him, jutting under the canvas of the luggage roof-rack, was the butt of his Winchester, still in its scabbard on his saddle rig. With his hands raised high as ordered by the outlaws, his fingers were within inches of the gun ...
But he relaxed almost immediately. There were no valuables on the coach. There was no sense in risking his neck and maybe the necks of the others to no purpose. Better to submit for the present and let them get on their way.
“All right,” the leader said, gesturing with his six-gun. “The, women can get back into the coach. And I mean pronto!”
The women looked startled but the girl with the young boy was the first to move and she climbed back in through the splintered door, dragging the crying child with her. The others followed swiftly. The masked leader walked up the line of men, staring hard into each face. Then he grabbed the shaking drummer and sent him reeling with a violent shove to one side. The fat man cowered where he fell but the leader had turned his attention to the driver now. He shoved the man over beside the drummer and one of the other outlaws covered these two with his rifle.
Nash frowned as the leader stood in front of him, the cowboy and the man who looked like an attorney. Something was wrong here. The outlaws weren’t after valuables. They were looking for something else. Something ... or someone!
The leader’s gun barrel jabbed into the cowboy’s midriff and the man grunted, stepping back and cannoning into the coach bodywork.
“What’s your name, feller?” he snapped.
The cowboy looked at him defiantly. “Go to hell!”
The leader’s eyes were cold and he didn’t even blink as he triggered, the gun’s explosion almost drowning out the frightened scream of the matronly woman inside. The cowboy lurched and fell, moaning, grabbing at his wounded leg.
“Your name!” the man snapped.
“Carson,” gasped the cowpoke, “Luke Carson.”
The leader stared down at him for a spell and then spun suddenly on Nash and rammed the gun barrel against his chest.
“Yours! Quick!”
“Stone,” Nash stammered, making himself look afraid. “Jeb Stone ... Look, I ain’t got much dinero. I’m ridin’ grubline ... ”
The outlaw shoved him roughly aside with a hand in the middle of his chest and gestured for him to keep his hands up as he turned to the attorney-type. The long, lean man had a cadaverous face but his eyes were like flints and Nash figured he was most likely a gambler, the way he had used that Smith and Wesson.
“And who might you be?” the outlaw asked.
“Jonah K. Lincoln, my friend,” the man replied in a rumbling voice, surprisingly deep, coming as it did from such a thin chest. “Gambler without peer. The things I can do with the pasteboards, you wouldn’t believe if I told you, but I am willing to demonstrate my ability ... ”
The outlaw hit him across the mouth and shoved him back. “Shut up!” he snapped, raking his eyes over Nash and the downed cowboy as well. “One of you is lyin’. Someone here’s named Nash.” He spun swiftly towards the driver. “You know who it is?”
“Nope,” the driver said, shaking his head, sweating with fear. “They all just piled in at the depot so I guess they fixed up their tickets inside.”
“Could be that cowboy who got shot off the top,” Nash said quietly, gesturing with a jerk of his head back towards the trail. He turned swiftly to the downed cowboy who was tying a dirty kerchief around his wounded thigh. “You said he was a pard of yours ... ”
“We rode together is all,” the man panted, looking up at the masked man. “Everyone called him Nevada ... I dunno his real name.”
“Could be he was workin’ undercover for Wells Fargo and used that name, Laredo,” one of the other outlaws said to the leader.
“Mebbe. But that ain’t the way we were told it.” He looked bleakly at Nash and Carson. “I got me an idea it’s one of you two. Don’t aim to spend all day findin’ out. If you don’t own up pronto, I’ll start with the kid and then work my way through the passengers one at a time ...”
“Hell, you might as well shoot us all now!” Nash said, looking around wildly. “He’ll have to kill us all! You see that?” He grabbed the gambler suddenly and shook him. “Come on, if your name’s Nash, admit it! Be man enough to save the women and that kid!”
The gambler heaved Nash away angrily and the masked leader jumped in to separate them, one of the others moving to help him. The third man kept his rifle on the driver and the drummer. In the confusion, Nash reeled back, making it look genuine, hands flying above his head. He snatched at the butt of his Winchester, dragging it from the scabbard as the third man yelled a warning. He heaved the second man into him and they stumbled around as the rifle came free and, swinging it by his grip on the butt, Nash laid the barrel across the side of the head of the masked leader. Laredo went down on his knees, grunting and then Nash threw himself around the rear of the coach as one of the other outlaws got off a shot.
In mid-air, he levered a shell into the breech of his rifle. He somersaulted as he hit, rolling up and spinning back to fire with the rifle angled up across his chest. One of the masked outlaws, running around the coach, stopped the bullet and went down yelling, his gun flying from his hands. Nash leapt up, levering even as he spun about and ran into the brush, bullets flying around his ears.
There was pandemonium back at the coach as he slammed his way through the brush. Then he was into the timber on the far side and he dived over a deadfall, came up and faced his pursuers. He was surprised to see there were three of them. The man he had dropped had apparently been only winged and he had joined in the chase, using a six-gun now, his left arm hanging limply from a blood-stained shoulder. Nash fired and levered fast, getting off four swift shots and sending the outlaws scattering for cover.
Then he leapt up and ran deeper into the timber, dodging between the trees, hearing lead whining off the trunks. He hadn’t hit anyone, it seemed, for he heard three guns barking behind him and then he was headed downslope for a creek and he couldn’t slow his pace as the ground fell steeply away with an abruptness that caught him unprepared. He tumbled all the way down and splashed into the chill waters of the creek, feeling the stones of the shallow bed grind into his body.
Dazed, but shocked out of it to some extent by the cold water, he staggered to his feet, starting to turn to face his pursuers up the slope. They were lined up there on the edge of the trail, obviously having known the lay of the land, and they pointed their guns down even as he brought his own rifle around and up and the outlaws’ weapons fired as one. Clay Nash’s body jerked with the impact of lead and he flailed backwards, rifle dropping from his hands and exploding once before it disappeared beneath the creek surface. There was a fan of spray as his body hit and he rolled over onto his face, tried to get up but collapsed into the wat
er and lay still.
The creek waters took on a reddish hue as they swirled about him.
The wounded outlaw up on the trail’s edge started gingerly forward down the slope but stopped when Laredo tore down his masking bandanna and snapped:
“What you doin’?”
“Gonna make sure the polecat’s finished!” the man panted.
“Leave him,” Laredo growled. “He’s dead. And if he ain’t, he’ll soon drown. Come on. We better get out of here before that driver gets his hands on some guns.”
The wounded outlaw shrugged, looked regretfully down at Nash’s sprawled body, then climbed back onto the trail with Laredo and the other man. They started back into the timber towards the place where they had left their horses.
Seven – Dakota on the Prod
The train stopped at a jerkwater siding where two red-eyed and hungover cowpokes stepped down and flung their gear into the back of a waiting buckboard. They climbed in beside their warbags and stretched out as the sour-faced ranny on the driving seat whipped up the team and drove fast, out over the rutted trail, jolting the cursing men unmercifully.
From his window in the passenger car, Dakota Haines watched idly, figuring they were a couple of cowpokes who had had a little time in Yuma and were now going back to their spread, their whooping-up only a memory that would help carry them through their endless monotony on some isolated ranch until next month when they would have another couple of days free. He rolled and lit a cigarette, watching as two other cowpokes swung their saddle rigs onto the passenger car platform and climbed aboard. Looked like they were headed for the fancier lights and delights of Tombstone rather than those of Yuma or Pistol Junction, he figured ...
He yawned as the train blew smoke and started to roll forward again. He looked up idly as the two cowpokes came down the aisle and dropped onto seats near him. One, a middle-aged ranny with a cast in one eye, sat opposite him and gave him a brief, friendly nod. His companion sat just across the aisle and immediately folded his arms across his chest, tilted his hat over his eyes and let his chin drop onto his chest. The middle-aged man began to build a cigarette and Haines looked out the window at the endless alkali as the train gathered speed.
“Trouble you for a light, amigo?” the middle-aged cowboy asked. He smiled apologetically with gapped, yellow teeth. “Must’ve left my vestas and don’t want to wake my pard. He did a spell of nighthawk just before we left the spread.”
Haines took a vesta from his shirt pocket and handed it to the man, who took it with a nod and snapped it into flame on a horny thumbnail.
“God-awful country, ain’t it?” he said as he flicked the spent vesta out the window. “Dunno how the spreads way back in the hills keep as much beef on their cows as they do.”
Haines grunted and continued to look out the window.
The cowboy sighed. “Sure be glad to see some bright lights and feel some soft flesh again. It’s been a long time. You been to Tombstone before?”
“Coupla times,” Dakota answered briefly, not encouraging conversation but he realized he had said the wrong thing when the cowboy moved along his seat to sit right opposite him, showing interest.
“Yeah? Well, that’s mighty lucky, ’cause I never been there. Nor has my pard. My name’s Charley Battle, by the way.”
He left it open for Haines to come back with his own name but the Wells Fargo man merely flicked a cold gaze towards him and said:
“Long time since I’ve been there. I dunno what it’s like now. Wyatt Earp was s’posed to have tamed it down some.”
Battle’s seamed face sobered. “Yeah, did hear that, come to think of it. Blamed lawmen! Always spoilin’ a cowpoke’s fun! Like to give ’em a month on the range and see how they felt then about closin’ down all the gal parlors and makin’ the saloons shut down at midnight. Well, I’ll be dogged! You see that?”
Charley Battle had been looking out the window while he was speaking and now he broke off abruptly and put his left hand up on the sill, leaning forward and across Haines as he exclaimed in surprise, pointing.
Haines brought his knee up sharply, heaving the man to one side as Billy across the aisle came to life and stood up with a cocked six-gun in his hand. Haines shoved the moaning Battle into Billy one-handed and swiveled up his sawn-off with the other, dropping hammer. The blast of the shotgun drowned out the roar of Billy’s six-gun and Haines spun back on the seat as the lead burned across the tip of his left shoulder. Billy seemed to leap back, feet leaving the floor completely as he flailed half the length of the car, face a mask of blood, his mouth a screaming black hole, as he collapsed into the aisle. Other passengers screamed and Charley Battle, recovering from the bite of several buckshot pellets from the charge that had killed his pard, dragged iron and blasted at Haines as Dakota rolled to the floor between the seats.
The Wells Fargo man’s sawn-off angled upwards and the second barrel thundered and Charley Battle slammed back against the opposite wall with his chest blown in. Before he had spilled to the floor, Haines was thumbing fresh shells into the sawn-off as he looked out warily from between the seat. But there was no more danger from assassins. The passengers were crouched behind their seats and Billy lay unmoving in the aisle. Slowly, Dakota Haines stood up, his sawn-off sweeping slowly around the car as it rattled and swayed down the track. Satisfied that there was no more danger, he reached up with his left hand and yanked the emergency stop cord, bracing himself for the sudden halt.
~*~
Clay Nash figured he had to be dreaming, delirious or already dead when he opened his eyes and stared into a woman’s smiling face. He blinked, forced the last dregs of fog and stupor from his brain and squinted at the face again. He was sure he must be delirious then, for it looked like Maggie Moran and the last thing he remembered was falling face-first into a creek beside the stage trail to Buckhorn Flats. And he had had lead in him, he recollected and winced at the memory.
The movement brought a groan of pain from him and he felt stiffness in his left side and hip. He was still carrying lead in him, he figured or, at least, the wounds made by the outlaw bullets ...
“You look a lot better this morning, Clay,” Maggie Moran said, smiling with relief, and he felt her tender touch as she stroked his sweat-beaded forehead.
“This mornin’?” he croaked, surprised to find how parched his throat was. He tried to sit up but pain shot through his head and there was a weakness in his limbs and body that shocked him. “Water ... ?” he asked and she held his head up while he gulped greedily from the cup she held to his lips. He eased back when he had finished, panting with the effort. His weakness bothered him plenty.
“Listen ... Maggie ... how did I get here?” he asked, looking around and figuring by the pitch of the ceiling and the canvas slung beneath the shingles of the roof that it had to be in the Moran house in Yuma. And that was a hell of a long way from where those outlaws had tried to kill him on the stage to Buckhorn Flats.
She squeezed out a cloth in the bowl of water beside his bed and wiped down his face and neck as she explained.
“Seems you were left for dead in a creek and you would’ve drowned except that your face rested on a rock away from the current. It kept your nose out of the water. The stagecoach driver thought you were dead when he reached you, because there was a lot of blood in the water. You’ve been hit twice. The stage returned to Yuma with you and the agent told us, so we had you brought here.”
“Much obliged, Maggie,” Nash said, frowning. “How long’ve I been here?”
“Stage came in just after dark last night. It’s around midmorning now.” She sobered. “Clay, the driver said they were attacked by Indians who forced the stage into the brush and then three masked white men took over and they asked for you by name ... ”
He nodded, recalling it all now. “Yeah. They were Mishawka Indians and I figure only someone like Clint Christian who grew up with ’em could get ’em to make an attack like that. Their job was to force the
stage into the ambush laid by the white men. Someone called ‘Laredo’ was the leader. I reckon Christian found out I was gettin’ close and ordered me killed.” He broke off, frowning. “Which means they likely could try for Dakota, or maybe they’ve already made their try for him ...”
“Where would Christian be getting all these men, Clay?” she asked, puzzled. “I understood that he didn’t keep a permanent gang.”
“Guess he has a bunch of gunnies he can call on when he has to. But there are a lot of rannies who’ll be glad to help him out now that he’s pulled off such a big robbery. They’ll all want a cut of the loot. No one’s heard from Dakota, I s’pose?”
“Not as far as I know ... Here! What d’you think you’re doing? Get back in that bed at once!”
“Got to find out if Dakota’s okay,” Nash said but he flopped back onto the bed, exhausted from the effort of even swinging his legs over the side. He must have lost a deal of blood while he was lying in that creek, he figured. His head spun and he gripped at the mattress as the ceiling seemed to whirl around him. He made no protest as Maggie lifted his legs back onto the bed and pulled up the sheet.
“You’re not going anywhere for a few days,” she told him firmly. “Dr. Thomas said to keep you as quiet as possible for a week.”
“Damn it, I want to get up now!” Nash gasped out. “Maggie, see if you can find out anything about Dakota. He was on that train to Tombstone ...”
She pushed gently against his shoulders, nodding. “All right, Clay, all right. Now, rest easy and I’ll see what I can find out.”
She turned as the door opened and Mrs. Moran came in. “Oh, he’s awake, Maggie ... Someone here to see you, Clay.”
She stood aside and Nash breathed out a long sigh of relief as Dakota Haines came in, holding his hat awkwardly in his hands.
“Looks like he’ll live,” Haines said quietly to no one in particular. “They tried for me on the train. Had to find myself a bronc to get back here. Figured I’d be hearin’ you were a corpse.”
